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THE 5 STAGESOF SUCCESSFULCLOUD MIGRATION
2 Connect with us today. 1.800.268.7638 | www.softchoice.com |
SUMMARY
Introduction .................................................................. 05
Gap Analysis ................................................................ 07
Get Moving .................................................................. 12
Planning ....................................................................... 18
Migration ...................................................................... 21
Optimization ................................................................. 24
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
Cloud services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services
(AWS) are robust tools for business success. They have evolved
far beyond the obstacles and limitations of the past. In 2017
alone, the cloud grew by almost 40% - a phenomenal growth
rate for any technology. By 2020, 60% of IT infrastructure and
70% of software and IT services spending will be in the cloud.
When deployed effectively, the public cloud is a powerful and
disruptive model. It brings positive operational transformation
and greater competitiveness. But poor implementation is
equally disruptive.
54% of IT leaders report that their teams
struggle to form a cloud strategy – the first step
of a cloud transition - which is why we created
this handy guide.
MOVING TO THE CLOUD WITH A PLAN AND A PURPOSE
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The pace of innovation is rapid and relentless. To keep up, business
leaders place ever-higher demands on IT to support their growth
and business initiatives. The public cloud has emerged to offer the
speed and flexibility required to meet those demands.
Make no mistake, moving to the cloud is a fundamental shift
in business. The impact of cloud adoption affects your entire
organization – not just IT. Cloud is a transformative piece of
technology. When a business opportunity presents itself, it can
be used to quickly put a solution in place. If a business area is no
longer relevant (or there is a downturn), cloud can help companies
reduce their technology footprint with speed and grace.
Your existing IT processes and controls should be a fundamental
part of this shift. Even though the cloud presents a new set of
tools and technologies, you should modify your processes and
controls to conform to cloud operations. This will help you ensure
that you provide the proper solutions within budget and with
appropriate administrative authority.
Before taking the plunge, consider the underlying motivations for
the move. What triggering event, business change or challenge is
driving you to the cloud?
Is it time for a major hardware or software refresh? Are you facing
strict new industry regulations to which you must respond? Top-
down pressure to do more with less is always there. Is there a
new business approach or service being launched that needs more
agile technology support?
In short: What is the business transformation that’s prompting
your technology transformation? With that knowledge in hand, you
can begin on the path to successful cloud adoption and achieving
greater value from it.
WHY CLOUD? WHY NOW?
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
Softchoice has worked on countless cloud initiatives at all stages
of adoption with our clients. Through that, we’ve identified five
stages that allow you to methodically approach your migration.
These five stages of cloud adoption act as a framework that will
help you to build your cloud strategy. It will also give you peace of
mind around cost, operations, and security.
INTRODUCTION: MEET THE FIVE STAGES OF CLOUD ADOPTION
ADOP
TION
TIME
GAP ANALYSIS
GET MOVING
PLANNING
MIGRATION
OPTIMIZE
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Tips and Best Practices
Available tool
Articles + Guides for download
There’s more! Throughout every chapter we’ve included best
practices, tools, and templates to keep you on the right track.
Stages, not steps
We’ve called them stages for a reason. While you progress through the stages, the journey isn’t exclusively linear. You may
find yourself weaving in and out of stages as you move workloads to the cloud and will likely repeat some or all of these
stages as you move additional workloads.
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
Gap analysis is the assessment of what you need to reach your
cloud goals. Going through this process will give you clarity. Clarity
on your current utilization and configuration and clarity on what you
can anticipate costs to be in the cloud. It’s determining the delta to
bridge between where you are, and where you want to be.
It may sound simple, but in helping deploy hundreds of cloud
initiatives we’ve found that a thorough gap analysis is often the
missing component. In fact, when cloud initiatives fail, it is often
because the gap analysis was insufficient.
When gap analyses fall short, it’s usually from poor self-assessment
or a poor understanding of the fundamental differences cloud
presents around financial and operational models.
Coming out of a gap analysis you should understand the following:
o Your average usage/consumption
o Your current configuration
o Current costs associated with keeping your data center running
o Expected costs in the cloud – on a month to month basis
o A general understanding of the other business units you’ll affect
MIND THE GAP
STAGE 1: GAP ANALYSIS
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Once the need to move to the cloud has been determined, the most successful cloud companies develop a detailed and objective understanding
of their current state and costs. Sadly, most businesses lack the tools to track their resource consumption across the breadth of levels,
departments, and stakeholders that exist.
WHERE ARE YOU TODAY?
There are automated tools out there to help you with this part of the process! Doing it manually means logging into each
server to see how much CPU and memory is being consumed on average. Multiply that by, say, 300 machines and you
can see how this can bring your migration to a halt just to understand your utilization.
We recommend creating a profile of your current state that includes:
A full assessment of data center usage and configuration. Look at the cost of everything that touches your storage, server and network
resources. How much are you paying for what you are using? And how much are they currently configured to accommodate?
Fact: Your current resources are likely configured to accommodate much higher performance than what you are actually using.
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
A common mistake made by companies moving into the cloud is configuring their server the same as it was on premise.
Since it wasn’t right-sized, you’ll end up spending more than you should.
If we didn’t make it clear enough how important it is to understand your current utilization vs. configuration keep in mind
there are egress charges: an incremental charge for data that leaves the cloud.
The cost of your facilities and utilities, including cooling
and power and real estate. The more detail the better, of
course. You may need to reach out to other departments for this
information. While this may seem cumbersome, keep in mind that
understanding this is important. These facility costs disappear once
you’re in the cloud. Having visibility builds a more accurate picture
of current costs vs. expected costs in the cloud.
People costs. How is your IT staff currently allocated? What
maintenance and infrastructure roles may not be needed in the
cloud? How much effort does physical infrastructure take, and how
will this change as systems move to the cloud? Start thinking now
about how you will reallocate and retrain these resources. Imagine
what is achieved when these resources are spent on initiatives
that drive innovation around business goals rather than keeping
the lights on.
Already in the cloud? It’s not too late
Even if you are in the middle of migrating to the cloud, you will be well served by conducting an in-depth gap analysis if you
have not already taken this step. This will ensure you’re on the right path and help you to consider many aspects of cost and
change you may be missing.
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A migration to the cloud is not just a lift-and-shift exercise, in
other words, simply transposing what you do in your data center
to the cloud. It represents a fundamental change in how resources
are consumed and how the business pays for them, moving from
CAPEX to OPEX. Treated as anything less is basically begging for
cost overages and ugly surprises.
When looking at what your move to the cloud will cost, you
must adopt a pay-for-performance mindset. Many in IT gravitate
towards bigger, better and faster, to support peak performance
requirements or growth of systems over time. This makes some
sense on-premise, where it may provide a certain degree of future
proofing. But not in the cloud, you only pay for what you use. As
suggested above, think about use, not configuration.
Going through a gap analysis may seem like a massive undertaking.
Truth be told, it can be a straightforward process however, one
that requires participation from multiple stakeholders. A thorough
gap analysis also helps reinforce the justification for your cloud
migration, something that becomes all the more important when
you move to the next stage: Get Moving.
At Softchoice, we’ve developed a tool to help with the time-
consuming process of assessing your current usage called the Public
Cloud Assessment. Keep reading to see what kind of outputs you
get with our assessment.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
It’s not about cost!
It is a mistake to see your move to the cloud as a tool for cost savings. On the surface, the cloud costs as much or
more than your on-premise solutions. The value is from intangibles such as increased focus on innovation, improved
accountability, greater productivity and faster time to market. More on this later!
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
Still not sure what surprise costs await you in the cloud?
Read our article 3 Ways to Predict Cloud Migration Costs to find out.
GET IT RIGHT, RIGHT OUT THE GATE
Not sure what your gap analysis should look like? At Softchoice we have a service called the Public Cloud analysis. It gives you information like a
detailed account of each server and it’s consumption, as well as projected costs in a forklift vs. optimized scenario.
MAPPING CUSTOMIZATIONOptions
System Info Tier/Instance SQL Linux Storage
Server NameEnvironment/Pool
IS Windows
IS SQL IaaS TierIaaS Instance(auto-mapped)
Projected Uptime(hrs/mo.)
Starting month (1-12)
SQLVersion
Linux Version
StorageType
Storage Redundancy
AMS-ARZ-VASDEV1 0 TRUEGeneral Purpose
StandardA1 v2
Standard744 1
Page Blobs
GRS
AMS-ARZ-VASDEV2 0 TRUEGeneral Purpose
StandardA2 v2
Standard744 1
Page Blobs
GRS
AMS-ARZ-VASDEV3 0 TRUEGeneral Purpose
StandardA1 v2
Standard744 1
Page Blobs
GRS
AMS-ARZ-VASDEV4 0 TRUEGeneral Purpose
StandardA2 v2
Standard744 1
Page Blobs
GRS
AMS-AZ-MASTER 0 TRUEGeneral Purpose
StandardA2 v2
Standard744 1
Page Blobs
GRS
AMS-BZ-MASTER 0 TRUEGeneral Purpose
StandardA8 v2
Standard744 1
Page Blobs
GRS
AMS-DFW-DEV1 0 TRUE YesGeneral Purpose
StandardA8 v2
Standard744 1
SQLStandard
Page Blobs
GRS
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When we say, “Get Moving” to the cloud, it isn’t exactly like saying
“Just do it!” Although getting started with your first workload is
important at this stage, this is really the time to do the front-
end work that lays the foundation for future successes. Your first
initiative is a great opportunity to get stakeholders united around
the strategic vision the business has for cloud and ensure there is
buy-in from all affected parties.
A quick, meaningful win is essential to building momentum. Choose
the first workload to move to the cloud carefully, but get going.
STAGE 2: GET MOVING
FIND YOUR FOOTING. MAKE YOUR MOVE.
Finding balance
One of the biggest governance challenges you’ll face is achieving a balance between ease of provisioning resources, and
maintaining compliance and controls. When developing your compliance strategy, don’t lose sight of your purpose for
moving to the cloud in the first place.
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YOUR FIRST WORKLOAD
There are two reasons to get moving before a more formal plan is
developed. You quickly build real-world experience. And, it helps
further develop the use case for the cloud.
When deploying your first workload to the cloud, choose
something manageable yet important. You want to demonstrate
strategic value across the organization while keeping the level of
complexity and risk of failure relatively small.
Ask yourself these questions when evaluating your first workload.
If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the below, try and find another
application:
1. Is it a legacy application? ¨ ¨
2. Is it a custom application? ¨ ¨
3. Does the data require the highest level of security? ¨ ¨
4. Does the data require compliance with other applications ¨ ¨
like Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI, and HIPAA regulations?
5. Does the underlying hardware and OS need to be highly available? ¨ ¨
YES NO
Still not sure what
application to start with?
Check out our article
How to Select Your First
Cloud Workload.
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Below you’ll find an example of the items we recommend to be in your application profile
OVERVIEWName Sage
Phase 2
Action Shift
CLOUD READINESSSuitability Risk
Green Low
Amber Medium
Red High
ROADBLOCKSPrimary Roadblock Secondary Roadblock Tertiary Roadblock
Dependency on Production Dynamics AX
Dependency on file server SMTP server
APPLICATION PROFILE DEPENDENCIESGroup Assets Instance
Group Name RDS ADFRDXXX
Group Name Remain ADFHELPDXXX
Group Name Remain adftermserxx
Group Name Dynamics AX Prod adfdynamXXXX
Group Name RDS ADFRDXXX
no agent 10.100.0/22 10.100.1.14
no agent 10.100.0/22 10.100.1.45
Group Name Remain ADFADXXX
Group Name Infra Support Systems ADFSMXXX
no agent 10.100.0/22 10.100.1.50
Group Name File Server ADFDOXXX
APPLICATION PROFILE HOSTSAsset Instance Name
Sage adffxx
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
THE NEED FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE
Internal stakeholders need to be considered in any cloud initiative.
Buy-in from finance, security and, if one exists, the strategic
projects department is crucial. Often these teams reap the most
rewards from the cloud but can be its biggest nay-sayers.
This is a step that is often over-looked for businesses when they
are transitioning to the cloud. This is all about controlling spend
and workload visibility. Ask yourself and cross-functional partner’s
questions like:
• Who owns this application/workload?
• How do we bill for it?
• How does someone request setting up a new workload?
• How are applications decommissioned?
These groups may have a hard time seeing how the cloud will
play out in terms of loss of control, budget, financial model
changes and security posture. Ease those fears by putting in place
solid financial and operational governance best practices.
Learn more about how to overcome the
challenges of getting moving with our article
The Battle for Cloud Adoption begins with
your stakeholders.
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Financial governance is very important to keep in mind. Moving to the cloud
changes your technology consumption model from CAPEX to OPEX. Your
financial governance should include visibility into usage and performance.
It should also enable you to charge or billback workload-related costs to a
department, project or individual. In our experience this level of visibility and
accountability is a powerful way to prevent over-spending.
It is important that procedures and controls be in place to ensure cloud
resources are not provisioned without being attached to specific projects,
initiatives and business goals. Start by nailing down roles and responsibilities:
who is authorized to turn on new infrastructure, and what does your security
posture look like in the cloud? How do you manage this in your data center today?
Operational governance. One of the cloud’s biggest advantages is the ease
of provisioning resources. Automation or orchestration further improve this
but demands another layer of diligence. To start, IT leaders need to embrace
the practice of ‘least privilege’ whereby administration rights are based on
the absolute minimum requirements the individual needs to do their job and
nothing more. Combined with documented policies on how cloud resources
are requested and retired can help avoid costly ‘compute sprawl’ and ensure
those who stand up and manage workloads are ultimately accountable for the
costs incurred by their work. To succeed in this area, you must define roles and
responsibilities. Define who will be responsible for infrastructure procurement,
assign authority to turn on cloud services, and determine who will assess your
security posture in the cloud.
What’s a showback?
For finance the ability to have accountable chargebacks for IT resources is a major advantage of cloud. Showbacks are
similarly enabled by cloud. In a showback model, IT resource use are tracked and presented by application, end user or
line of business but not billed. This creates cost awareness, can help foster a culture of accountability and assists with
justifying business decisions around IT infrastructure
Zombie Storage
Setting up an application in the cloud can be relatively simple to test and develop. However, once you’re ready to
decommission you have to do more than just turn it off. If there is storage attached to it, once the application is turned
off, that storage continues to sit there, and rack up costs.
THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
Tip: Keep in mind dependencies!
We touch on this more in Stage 3: Planning but make sure you understand which applications are dependent on each
other and understand the complexity. Here’s a common scenario: a line of business application is dependent on a
reporting service. If you move the one line of business into the cloud but it’s dependent on the other, performance could
degrade and your phone could start ringing with people complaining about the cloud.
To learn more about the most common mistakes and how to avoid them, check out this guide:
Controlling and Optimizing your Costs in the Cloud.
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ROADMAP TO SUCCESS
With all the competitive advantages available, your move to the
cloud needs to be an unequivocal success. Your first successful
project lays the foundation for another and another.
Developing a plan for what to migrate and when will ensure you
maintain that momentum-building success. Unfortunately, most
businesses plan their cloud projects with an incorrect assumption
that often comes back to haunt them. But you don’t have to be
one of them!
CLOUD ADOPTION IS NOT A DATA CENTER MOVE
Businesses too often treat their cloud projects like the moving of
servers or infrastructure between locations. It bears repeating:
moving to the cloud is not a simple lift and shift of your applications.
Applications that worked on-premise won’t automatically
work the same, or at all, in the cloud. Others may require an
upgrade to be cloud ready. Your application of choice may have
interdependencies; moving it to the cloud may rely on your ability
to move another. Also, there are many opportunities to optimize
how an application operates in the cloud, further extending the
benefit of the cloud itself.
Your adoption plan must take into account the technical
requirements of all software, the effects operating in the cloud
will have on their performance, and how to meet your business
SLAs and regulatory requirements within the cloud.
STAGE 3: PLANNING
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
Spring cleaning! Moving to the cloud allows you to get your “house” in order. You can declutter the applications you have.
Do you have redundancies? Planning for the cloud is a good opportunity to upgrade, rationalize and standardize your
existing applications.
FOCUS ON APPLICATIONS
The typical server-based approach to migrating to the cloud
is not a strategic one. Instead, build your cloud plan based on
your applications and their suitability for the cloud. This will also
make certain you have a deep understanding of each application
– its impact, dependencies, business value and any potential
roadblocks – all before it even touches the cloud. Start by profiling
your applications.
Start by profilling your applications. Determine which are
dependent on each other, which pose the greatest risk, and which
are the strongest candidates for the cloud. Pay close attention to
risks, complexity, dependencies, operating costs and suitability.
Remember not everything belongs on the cloud.
Determine the business impact of moving to the cloud.
Consider not only the value of moving the application but also
what SLAs need to be in place to maintain quality and support
the user experience. This is best done by meeting with business
stakeholders and presenting migration scenarios.
Create a phased roadmap. With that hard work done, selecting
the most appropriate application to move, and the next, and the
next, and so on, becomes a much simpler task. Start with the low-
hanging fruit that can be moved with little to no disruption and
increase complexity in sub-phases. Often, without the benefit of
such a roadmap, cloud initiatives grind to a halt after the first app
and you lose the true value of cloud adoption.
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Remember: Not every workload can or even
should be moved to the cloud. Your roadmap
will also help you determine what stays behind.
DON’T FORGET A SECURITY PLAN!
Thorough planning around security is essential to success, even for
minor cloud projects. While cloud service providers such as Microsoft
and AWS provide some security resources, it’s best to treat these as
the foundation on which to build your security capabilities. Keep in
mind: the cloud does not replace your own responsibilities.
Get familiar with the shared responsibility between you and your
service provider. What aspects of security they take off your plate
and which they leave varies based on provider and service type
(IaaS, PaaS). We can’t stress how important it is to fully understand
your accountabilities.
Cloud doesn’t make up for bad security and moving unsecured apps
to the cloud will not magically fix them. But reviewing applications
and taking advantage of cloud security can be a boon to your
security efforts.
Taking advantage of cloud-based security and business continuity
requires you to embrace best practices in identity and access
management, endpoint security, disaster recovery and backup and
security policies. The cloud doesn’t make up for bad practices or
poor policies.
Find out more Azure Security Best Practices in
our cloud security article.
Learn more about Cloud Application Migration:
Developing a Focused Roadmap.
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
AUTOMATE TO WIN
Typical on-premise migration scenarios involve the laborious
process of procuring new servers, storage, and infrastructure for
the data center. To account for peaks, you must buy hardware and
software configured to meet the highest-level of performance you
might need. If you fail to account for peak performance, you’ll
need to buy even more, and risk longer, costlier delays — and
missed opportunities
Of course, this is not the case with the cloud, where infrastructure
and resources are available at a moment’s notice. In fact, to achieve
the promise of the cloud, being able to scale up and down based on
usage and performance need with speed and ease is essential.
If you’re still thinking of the cloud as a location to put your data
and applications, stop. Cloud is a model, not a place. It’s a wholly
different way for IT to operate and your migration needs to be
viewed through that lens.
When migrating workloads to the cloud, deploy for the valleys or low-points in application use. Use automated scripts to
scale if or when that usage peaks. Can’t do that on-premise, can you?
STAGE 4: MIGRATION
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AUTOMATION IS THE KEY
You can’t go to the CFO or CIO for $100 every time you spin up a
new virtual machine. Similarly, lines of business can’t be able to
go around spinning up cloud workloads without any eye on costs.
Once again, having good governance is critical.
Achieving the agility and time-to-value that you’re turning to
the cloud for also requires the use of sophisticated scripting and
automation tools. Luckily, the cloud offers automation tools that far
exceed the ones that exist for on-premise virtualization solutions.
If you aren’t automating the provisioning of your cloud
infrastructure, maintenance and updates, you are missing the very
point of cloud.
Script the infrastructure. Using the sophisticated automation,
scripting engines, and templates offered by cloud service providers
lets you quickly migrate your applications to the cloud and scale
them as needed. Your deployments will happen faster, your
application migrations will be less prone to error, plus it will let
you take full advantage of the benefits of the cloud.
Automate maintenance and updates. Despite what some
believe, the need to maintain and update applications doesn’t go
away when they’re on the cloud. Third-party tools such as Puppet
and Chef allow you to configure automated updates in the cloud
so they have virtually no impact on the production environment.
For example, you can simply add virtual machines to update
applications without touching your production machines—that is,
of course, until the updates are completed.
Governance automation. IT often doesn’t have enough time to
effectively police cloud use or every request for cloud resources.
It’s not realistic to think you can manually address all the
issues that crop up when you migrate workloads to the cloud.
Automating aspects of your cloud strategy makes your life easier
and is a major component of good operational governance.
You can define criteria to automate repetitive or time-intensive
tasks, schedule workload shutdowns and, importantly, control
consumption (and spend).
THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
In-depth advice
For a more detailed look at how automation can be a game changer for your cloud migration check out our article
Cloud automation: Closing the innovation gap.
Think you might need a cloud managed service provider but need help picking the best MSP for your needs,
read our article: 3 Reasons You Need A Cloud Managed Services Provider.
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REFINE, REFINE, REFINE
The work doesn’t end when your applications are on the cloud.
Once you have successfully moved to the cloud and achieved
some degree of operational normalcy, it’s now time to go a step
further and refine your deployment.
Thanks to constant competition between service providers, prices
drop far faster than they do with on-premise infrastructure. As
well, the pace of new technologies and methodologies coming to
the cloud is relentless, and each new improvement and iteration
offers the opportunity to improve performance, reduce costs and
improve compliance.
In a mere matter of weeks, by making the right choices to
optimize your cloud deployment you could cut associated costs by
more than 20 percent and it just keeps getting better.
COMPLACENCY IS THE ENEMY OF VALUE
Maximizing value from the cloud requires being aware of usage
and traffic patterns and constantly looking for ways to do more
with less. A workload that costs $1000 in its first month, could
actually cost as little as $200 per month in its third year.
This comes back to good governance (again) and the use of tools
that provide greater visibility such as a usage dashboard, as well
as Artificial Intelligence and business intelligence tools.
By building business logic into your decisions around consumption
and right-sizing, you can automate the changes needed to
your cloud environment. Automation is the key to preventing
complacency.
STAGE 5: OPTIMIZATION
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
A FULL-TIME JOB
As much as the cloud and automation free up time from
administrative tasks, staying on top the multitude of rapid
changes that will affect your organization takes a lot of time.
You must monitor usage and performance on levels never seen
in the past. Fortunately, there are tools and services to help with
that monitoring.
In the on-premise world, compelling events for change might
happen annually or, more likely, once every three years. In the
cloud, there may be a new opportunity to reduce waste, or some
technological challenge to address, or even a challenge that’s
become simplified, in any given week.
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Below, we’ve included a screen grab of the Softchoice Cloud Usage Dashboard, our solution for continued visibility into cloud programs.
We’ve taken all our tips from this guide and put it into one powerful tool. Here’s the tools you’ll have access to:
01. Softchoice TechCheck Assessment
clients gain a unified view of o
premise assets in the environment.
02. Drill down, visualize and report on
unique scenarios such as geography
and organizational units.
03. Customizable rollup of multiple
cloud assets tailored to your specific
needs including health, usage and
potential risks.
04. Single View for Multiple Cloud
Environments
05. Consolidated Reporting
06. Application Provisioning
07. Pulls data together real-time from a
client’s tenant via vendor API’s
08. Cloud Reporting Integration
09. Product Integration
10. Integration with services such as
Office 365 to activate cloud services
and allocate features based on
individual user, group or other
characteristics.
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
BUILD AND EXERCISE YOUR SELF-SERVICE MUSCLE
To see the agility you expect from moving to the cloud, change the process of requesting IT resources. Developing self-service capabilities
within your organization through automated provisioning and a service catalog is also recommended.
Licensing: Don’t pay twice!
In addition to monitoring traffic and performance, you need to pay close attention to your enterprise software license
agreements. Many instances of cloud software embed licensing into the cost, meaning you could end up paying for
the software twice. Traditional license management tools don’t spill over to the cloud. You need someone with an
understanding of licensing to remain vigilant or you could be overspending.
Turn the lights off
A major cause of unexpected cost overruns are workloads spun out in the cloud and never shut down. Thankfully, in the
cloud, automation tools can be scripted to de-provision VMs once no longer in use.
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More to consider
Need help knowing where to start with cloud
security? Download The Path to Cloud Security
is Through Automation and find out.
Looking for optimization tools? Both Microsoft
and Amazon have tools and templates to
help. Check out the Microsoft Azure Advisor
optimization tool and AWS Trusted Advisor.
KEEP SECURITY TOP OF MIND
Security issues in the cloud never go away. (Or on-premise for that
matter.) Fortunately, thanks to automation tools on the cloud you
can solve many security issues with the click of a mouse. Don’t
forget, though, someone must still be mandated to look after
them. Security, just like cloud traffic and performance, isn’t a case
of set-and-forget.
Diligence around security is non-negotiable even in the shared
model of the cloud. Most on-premise security vendors have
expanded to have versions of their solutions available on Azure
or AWS, including firewalls and encryption tools. Still, your data
remains 100% your responsibility.
New threats, new technologies and even new regulations are
persistent concerns with which to contend on the cloud.
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
HYBRID IT STAGES OF ADOPTION
• Multi-Cloud
• Cost Estimate
• Recommendations
DetailedInventory
1 GAP ANALYSIS
• Process
• Skills
• Tools
2
ProductionWorkload
• IT OPS
• Support
• Security
• Finance
• LOB
DeployCross Functional
TeamReview
GET MOVING
3
Application
• Shift
• Upgrade
• Remain
• Replace
• Modernize
Risk Cost
Roadblocks Archtecture
Suiteability Priorization
PLAN
Connect with us today. 1.800.268.7638 | www.softchoice.com | 30
Scripts & Templates
Code Repository
Deploy
Config MGMT
Build
Migrate
4 MIGRATION
5
Insight
Insight
Cost Governance
OPTIMIZE• Performance
• Usage
• Spend
Automate
Right Size
Modernize
IN CLOSING
Migrating to the cloud is an ebb and flow process. You’ll transition in and out of these steps as you go through your journey. Our 101 guide
is meant to familiarize yourself with the steps, what’s involved in and provide you with a deeper dive into particular topics to help you build
your foundational knowledge.
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THE IT LEADER’S GUIDE TO MAXIMIZING CLOUD VALUE
READY TO MAKE A SMARTER MIGRATION TO THE CLOUD?Get the skills, roadmap, and ongoing support you need to ensure success.
The Softchoice Public Cloud Accelerator is the only service of its kind to include the migration of a production workload along
with the staff training, tools and ongoing support you need for long term cloud success.
The Cloud Accelerator Includes:
Full Day Educational
Workshop: Learn how
to select the right cloud
services and more.
Cloud Architecture:
Understand the reference
architectures, automation
and infrastructure-
as-code to build your
environment.
Workload Migration:
Certified Cloud Engineers
complete your migration.
Ongoing Support:
Get 4 months of unlimited
cost governance and
technical support.
Learn more and start your smarter migration to the cloud today.
START MY MIGRATION!
Find out how Softchoice unleashes the potential of people and technologyat every stage of your cloud adoption.
www.softchoice.com | 1-800-268-7638
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